ZBrushCentral

Go Z for V-Ray 2.x Standalone version?

Hi!
I’ve been trying to find out if there is a good way to use V-Ray, the standalone version along with ZBrush?
The Go Z integration I’ve found is only through Maya or 3ds Max? Can any of these be used to get the same kind of data into the standalone version too, or is there another way?

/Magnus

Hi,

VRay is a render engine, not a 3D editing software. So, it is actually quite pointless to make GoZ send some mesh directly to it, as there would still be no shader on it and no camera. What you must send to VRay standalone is a full scene, so yes you have to first take your model to maya/3dsMax or whatever software.

VRay standalone is the render engine without all the integration in any software. It reads .vrscene files that can be exported from a software with VRay not standalone installed. If there is a way to export a .vrscene without some VRay “not standalone” version, I never heard of it. I know you can directly edit those files by hand, but quite frankly I don’t think of any reason why someone would do that to render some ZBrush made model. It would be lot of work for something you could do very easily with VRay for max/maya. But maybe you have your reasons.

Have a nice ZDay :slight_smile:

Thank you very much for your explanation! I have never used V-Ray. I’ve only seen the nice renders it produces :slight_smile:

My reason was simply not having 3ds max nor Maya. The V-Ray standalone version is quite a lot cheaper than the full version of Keyshot. I was simply trying to find out if the standalone version V-Ray could be an alternative to Keyshot.
I guess I would have to go through Blender in that case.

Thank you for your reply!

No problem !

You know VRay does not produces “nice renders” by itself, people set up nice renders using it, it’s not magical at all. And by the way you can get exactly the same result using mental ray, or even blender. The only one that is really quite “magic” is keyshot as it is a software designed to get really nice renders really easily. Even with ZBrush you can get really nice render quite easier than in VRay/MentalRay/Blender… They’re quite big pieces of software to learn. It’s not that they are “hard” to learn but you won’t master them in one week. It’s just time and motivation.

Before buying anything expensive I strongly advise you to practise a lot, in ZBrush and if you’ve got blender then in it. Maybe download a maya/max trial version as it is shipped with MentalRay. If you are student I think you can have a free version for 3 years. Anyway always try before buy !!!

(I speak of blender but honestly I don’t know much about this one, the last time I used it is ten years ago or so. But I’ve seen quite some good renders with it too, so it is possible, but I don’t really know how powerful/efficient it is. I really think it’s not bad at all but I don’t know for sure.)